Former NFL Star Claims Cop Threatened Him... But It Sounds Like Fantasy

Roddy White a former Atlanta Falcons football player, apparently came just short of wetting himself during a routine traffic stop in Dekalb County (GA) because he imagined an officer making what he perceived as a life-threatening motion towards his service weapon.

Advertisement

…and that’s where hysterical Roddy White lost me.

barney_01

You see, this isn’t 1960s Mayberry, and cops no long use basketweave leather holsters with a simple thumb break.

Instead, the modern law enforcement officer uses a retention holster that locks the gun into the holster against attempts to disarm officers by suspects.

The last I checked, there currently five levels of retention offered in various holster models by different manufacturers, and the vast majority of agencies issue either Level II or Level III holsters.

Dekalb County, several decades and states away from the fictional North Carolina town of Mayberry and Deputy Fife’s revolver and the single bullet he carried in a pocket, doesn’t use the kind of holster Mr. White imagined with a simple leather strap over the top that is unbuttoned.

Advertisement

screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-3-09-35-pm

They instead utilize locking devices that grab the trigger-guard (shown above).

Oops.

Poor Roddy.

18645434_bg1

Poor, delicate Roddy White needs a safe space and binky because “Officer Kirby” rested his hand on his gun as has just about every police officer in the history of policing at one time or another…

Erik Estrada, who famously played a cop on the TV show "CHIPS," is a full-fledged police officer in real life now.

…even fake TV cops that later became real cops.

It’s one of the most common resting positions for an officer’s hand; natural, instinctive, and pretty much innocuous unless you’re completely paranoid.

Advertisement

“Officer Kirby” did nothing wrong.

He treated the paranoid White with respect, and wasn’t even impolite to the hysterical unemployed football player. He simply wrote White a pair of tickets, and probably never gave White a second thought, one of thousands of mundane contacts he’s had with citizens in in career.

But Roddy White had to make a mountain out of a molehill, the hero of his own Twitter fantasy where he’s the “hero” of a Walter Mitty fantasy, saving some future person’s life by tweeting a grossly embellished fantasy, undone by his own overactive imagination and what he remembers of Barney Fife’s holster from Andy Griffith show reruns on TBS.

fife-gun I hope the NFL can help Mr. White a good treatment program.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Advertisement
Advertisement